AN ARMY FOR SALE.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3379, 20 June 1927, Page 7

AN ARMY FOR SALE.

One of the strangest of adventures, yet one of the least known, is the wild, flamboyant rascal who called himself the Baton do Gorainb. Like a meteor he blazed aloft, expired, and is forgotten. But so picturesque a being should not altogether die. One day in April, 1810, there appeared at London a mysterious stranger. Whercever he was seen abroad Ids stupefying aspect moved the wonder ot the crowd. He was a man of 35, whose magnifiennt moustache, straight nose, and eagle eyes electrified the hearts of all the ladies. Ho-seemed to be some kind of foreign officer, but his uniform outclazzled a stage bandit’s. It consisted of a Logged coat ablaze with stars, a mantle fastened with a silver skull, top-boots half-way up his thighs, gauntlet's to the elbow, a fur cap crested with a heron’s plume, a belt in which wore stuck a row of pistols, a life preserver, a dagger and a jewelled sword. Add to these a front of brass and a tongue that, people said, could talk the hind-leg off a donkey, and you have the portrait of the man before you.

This resplendent hero hired a mansion near Hyde Park, stocked it—on credit—with furniture on princely style, a retinue of lackeys, and a coach-and-four. Then he proceeded to call upon Lord Wellesley at the Foreign Office, explaining that he brought a .scheme to rout Napoleon in five weeks. He had raised and armed a force of 420,000 Croat soldiers, which, at the bargain price of £50,000, cash down, ho was prepared to place at the disposal of King George. The Minister, too wily to be caught with a gold brick spoke him fair, while secretly he set his spies all over Europe to investigate the story. It appeared that the effulgent stranger was in reality a Jew from Budapest, who possessed no means of a livelihood except his wits, and who had married the widow of an actual Baron and had annexed the title. His career had been a string of wild adventures. At Rome lie had put his nock in peril by climbing the Cathedral of St. Peter to inscribe Ills name upon the ball of bronze above' the dome. At Naples, he fought a duel beside the crater of Vesuvius in the midst of smoke and flame. At Vienna, like a second Raieigh, he had laid his cloak before the Queen, had been, appointed a Court Chamberlain, and had levanted with a sum of money. Then Geramb turned up at the Court of Sicily, proclaiming that he meant to shoot Napoleon with a pistol. A portrait of the Emperor, at which he practised firing, was suspended in his chamber. But Napoleon was not born to he his prey. Queen' Caroline, although appoaetiing 60, was still, as she had always been, an arrant flirt. The magnificent moustache and eagle eyes were not to he resisted. At all times and places, in the throne-room, in her carriage, in her opera box, there was the eternal Baron perched beside the flighty Queen. The thing became a public scandal. Foreseeing the approaching storm, the paladin gave forth the statement tiiat King George demanded his advice in London. And so ho vanished from Palmero and was seen no more.

No one was more delighted at his going than the pious daughter of the Queen, Princess Amelia, whose marriage to the Duke of Orleans was to make her, in the course of time, the Queen of France. iNothing was more remote from,her desire or expectation than to set eyes upon Ins face again. But it was her destiny to do so, as we are going to see. And surely never can the whirligig of time have brought about a stranger meeting. Lord Wellesley, on receiving this report. bade the Baron leave the country without more ado. The latter, vowing tliat his warriors were already on the way, refused to stir an inch without his’money. Retreating to his mansion, lie turned the place into a citadel, erected on the roof a sign-board witli the legend “My Home is my castle,” and, discharging his retainers, set himself to hold the fort alone.

Huge crowds before the windows gazed entnralled upon tae bold defender, with the light of battle in his eyes, darting too and fro within, charging blunderbusses, grinding sabres, and, above all, brandishing a lighted torch, which he had sworn to plunge into a powder-cask at any threat of his arrest. The police, averse to being blown to smithereens, employed a stratagem; they stole by night into the garden at the rear, dashed the door in with ah axe. and rushed upon their man before his torch could reach the powder. He was overpowered and bound, transferred to Harwich, and shipped upon a vessel bound for Denmark. As that country was an ally of the French, ho was now constrained to change his tactics. He first proposed to build upon the coast, entirely at his own expense,, a monument “symbolic of the crimes of England.” He then proclaimed that he desired to place his sword and fortune at Napoleon’s service. Accordingly, he sent up a petition, in eleven languages, together with a picture of himself, upon his knees before the Emperor’s throne. But his escapades in London had appeared in print, and Napoleon’s only answer was a sharp command for his arrest. He was conveyed to Paris and at first sluit up, with some propriety, in a lunatic asylum; but as he broke the furniture to matchwood, set his cell in flames, and nearly burnt the house down, ho was removed and locked up in a prison like a wild-cat in a cage.

At Napoleon’s fall he was released, and being threatened with arrest lor theft he sought refuge in the Trappist monastery at Port-Salut. He declared that he bad vowed, if lie survived the prison, to dedicate to Heaven the gifts of which the princes of the earth had proved themselves unworthy. He was first appointed as a guide to visitors, and then, as the convent was in need of money, ho was commissioned to become a kind of begging friar among fbo wealthy residents of the vicinity. His success was perfectly astounding. Never Was a man so popular as Brother Joseph! He related tales ol his adventures; he talked in all the tongues of Europe; he sang songs to the piano that brought tears into the listeners’ eyes. Nor had he lost a tittle of his fire and spirit. “He was,” said mio who knew him, “a powderbarrel in a cowl.” Tn (lio year 1830 be undertook a journey to the Holy Land, about which he wrote a charming hook. Then he went on pilgrimage to Borne, whore he so entertained the Pope that His Holiness declared that Brother Joseph ought to bo a Pope himself. On bis departure, the Pontiff charged him to convey a golden candle to the Queen of France. And so we see him, in due course, attending at the Palace of the Tuileries. When he appeared before the Queen, arrayed in cassock and half-mitre, with a mantle flowing from Ifis shoulders, a beard that swept bis girdle, and the golden candle in Ills band, she broke into a cry of wonder. And indeed she must have thought that she was dreaming, as she recognised in Ibis imposing envoy of the Church the wild Lothario who had turned her skittish mother into a laughing stock so manv years before. I'n ISIS be was again in Pome, and there, in all the odor of sanctity, bo (Tied. And so there vanished from the earth fbo fiorv figure, as strange as ever canto to shape within the brain of

a romancer. who began as Captain Thdiadil and ended as Friar Tuck.